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Sunday, August 14, 2005

artist-critics

In the comments to one of last week's posts artist Bill Guskysays "the few truly useful art critics remaining, for me, are the artist-critics, in particular Joe Fyfe, Chris Martin, and Stephen Westfall (does Westfall still write?), and, to some degree, Eleanor Heartney".I included Merlin James in that group and asked "okay, that is four painters who also write art criticism - mostly about other painters. What about non-painters? Artists in other mediums?". An anonymous commenter added "what about female artist-critics? I hate this crowd of guys idea".Can anybody recommend some other good artist-critics?

Alexei Worth used to write for Artforum, had a show last fall somewhere on 57th Street. I like his writing more than his paintings. Mira Schor writes and paints. Personally I am not a fan of her paintings but her writing is pretty interesting, she wrote a book called "Wet" that came out in 97 or 98. Hey and for that matter Jerry Saltz used to be an artist back in the day.